Why are we so rude online?

Quote from barnz008 : If I accept this claim, to whom exactly should I look for the supply of said PR? What's the origin?

Most large modern entities spend copiously on public relations, you can for example see the results of their work in the various breaks in TV shows, to the extent that the programming is itself paid for with such a purpose. The ads and message are typical a function of the market dept, and the resulting influence is to the extent that it's abnormal for an ordinary consumers to deal with companies they don't have some "mental image" of.

Political parties are a special subset of this, except the dept of "strategists" is even larger and it's arguable the whole thing is marketing. For various historical reasons, the "press core" is even more sympathetic to their marketed message than most private entities, and the various ads in form of easy to digest talking points is considered a direct part of the programming itself.

Furthermore, the relationship between a private company and the party is not only the rather obvious money transfer, but as provider of mercenary "expertise" in form of pundits from "think-tanks" and whatnot provided to media as a free alternative to actual research. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that everything said is false (as some seem to assume upon hearing of this), only that there's no correlation between what's parroted and reality.

The medium itself is unimportant, since for example the same few points from Ron Paul can permeate on the web unexamined just as freely as the latest "cut taxes to create jobs" message on CNN. Actually knowing things takes critical learning (ie relatively hard work), which is not something most folks are inclined to do when the alternative comes pre-chewed. We simply follow and repeat the dialog (including the mannerism and cultural norms of what is acceptable vs. "rude"). This isn't to say all we do is define via the media, but it's unquestionable that our society's leadership roles are theater in the ultimate pursuit of money (even if it's not for themselves per se).

Speaking of which, take a step back and observe that in this PR system the driver is money. That is, starting from the top of this comment, it's notable how and why it flows, for what purpose. In that sense, "trickle down" of paid PR paid is an honest portrayal of how this particular system fundamentally works.

Quote : And for those birds [are they not parrots?] who do possess the ability to think and type outside the "tripe," where do you suppose their ideas come from? Are they indeed original?

The difference here isn't originality per se, but the presence of perspective and thought. For example, it's very unlikely for any person to come up with an original explanation for gravity or how the Fed works. What is important is understanding a system enough to evaluate the claims without falling back to the claims themselves.

A more specific example would be the claim that "things fall down", or "the fed prints money". The former is not meaningful without some idea of what "down" means, and what "fall" means. Similarly without an understanding of the nature of money or "printing", the latter is also meaningless. The Herp McDerp behavior here or really anywhere on the web or IRL that's worth criticizing is the simply lack of any effort to examine the details of what's being said. As in, it would be very difficult to imagine many folks actually reading about physical motion/currency or even the links they post themselves, since even direct shame/criticism of this yields zero deviation of habit. My theory is that this deplorable mindset is significantly derived from the conditioning presented via the media for its benefactors, but whatever your own is it doesn't preclude the observation that this behavior is real.

Contrast this with the focus on "rudeness" which is akin to grammar nazi fixation on semantics; hardly why vast majority of the comments are so worthless.